“While the bloodbath between princes continued to rage, I went to find you. Wrath had revealed to everyone that we were twins, so our scheme was over, and even if it wasn’t, I wouldn’t abandon you,” Vittoria said, her voice softening. “It didn’t take long to find you, but I’d been too late. Once the witches had you, they moved quickly. The twin witches who had been born? They sacrificed them immediately. Kept their hearts pumping through magic.”
“What?” Chills raced along my spine. Another realization clicked into place. I glanced at Nonna, who finally looked regretful. “The prophecy of the twin witches wasn’t about us.”
Vittoria shook her head. “It never was. The prophecy of the twin witches simply says that they would be sacrificed—we are not those witches. Yes, twin witches—babies—were born that night, and the Star Witches sacrificed them and took their hearts. They put those hearts inside of us and created our spell-locks. We were infused with their mortality.”
“Nonna raised them, raised us,” I said, still reeling. I gave my grandmother a horrified look. “You were in our earliest memories. You taught us to bless our amulets. You taught us to cook.” I rubbed my hands over my arms. The chill had turned bone-deep. Our grandmother had brutally killed two innocent witches. Witches she went on to raise. It was unfathomable. Looking at her now, I was unable to process the mixture of emotions swirling through me. She’d been the ultimate force of good in my life. Had hated everything to do with the dark arts. And all along she’d been the ultimate evil. “How could you? How could you do that to those girls?”
Nonna’s fists curled at her sides. “Duty. We all knew a day would come when we’d be forced to sacrifice. They gave up their lives, and we gave up our hearts that day, too. It is our destiny to watch the prison of damnation. To ensure the Wicked and the Feared don’t get out. Once the curse had gone into effect, you posed a great threat to our world. You are a vengeance goddess. We did not want to risk your fury once you’d discovered that a witch had taken something so precious from you. The First Witch wouldn’t—and couldn’t—break her curse, and we acted accordingly.”
“All to bind us? Because of hate and fear?” I saw the truth of that in Nonna’s eyes, but I also saw something else. Something more complicated. Like perhaps Nonna started to question her duty. Perhaps she’d grown to love us, her enemies. And maybe that was why she filled our heads with lies of the Wicked. With telling us who to fear. One of the warnings she’d told us repeated itself in my mind.
Whatever you do, you must never speak to the Wicked. If you see them, hide. Once you’ve caught a demon prince’s attention, he’ll stop at nothing to claim you. They are midnight creatures, born of darkness and moonlight. And they seek only to destroy.…
Knowing what I did now, I understood the true warning. They’d been hiding me from Wrath. They knew he would stop at nothing to claim me, to destroy what the witches had done. He’d bided his time; he’d searched. And even through his hate, he never let that ember of love die.
The story and warning weren’t lies. They just weren’t my truth. Those warnings only belonged to the witches. They did everything in their power to keep us apart. To break our bond. And they failed. I refused to meet my grandmother’s pleading stare another moment. I looked at my sister. She might be a monster now, but she wasn’t pretending to be anything else.
“I still don’t understand one part… how was this scheme to trick Wrath and Pride supposed to work? I know Envy said no spies ever made it to our circle. But didn’t the demons know of us, even if they’d never been to our House?”
Vittoria uttered a spell, then drew a map in the space between us. It glowed a soft lavender as it hovered before me. My twin pointed to the almost familiar continent. “The underworld bears many similarities to the mortal land of Italy. The upper region, corresponding to Piemonte, is where lesser demons and ice dragons roam.” She moved her hand, and a different area, roughly the location of Tuscany, glowed. “This region is where the princes of Hell reside.” She swept the magic along the southern border, approximately in the same location as the region of Campania. “And this is where House Vengeance is. There is a treacherous mountain range here that serves as a nearly impassable barrier to our domain—even for immortals. Within the mountains is a veil of sorts, one that erases memories. Except for ours, our mother’s, and anyone we choose to gift with true Sight.” My twin pointed out another section. “The vampire court is near the very tip, where Calabria is for humans. And the island of Sicily is nearly identical to the location of the Shifting Isles.”
The map faded into the shadows. At least I now understood how the princes—who seemed to know much about everything—were in the dark about us. “I don’t understand why we kept ourselves mysterious. For what, centuries? Is there a reason we didn’t comingle with the princes?”
Vittoria’s expression shifted. It wasn’t quite hatred, but there was a coldness about her features that surfaced each time I brought up the princes of Hell. “Demons—especially princes of Hell—cannot be trusted. And are beneath us. We had enough to occupy us in the southern region and had no cause to get involved in their squabbles.”
“We were here shortly after the underworld was created,” I recalled suddenly.
“And the princes came centuries later, when they were cast from their own realm.”
I sensed there was much more to that particular part of our history but left it be for now. Above all else, I needed to understand our current predicament—the curse and how it came to be—if I had any hope of breaking it.
My twin was in a rather giving mood, freely offering information without any magical restraints. I might not have many other opportunities to gather this much information, so I took advantage. “If I was torn away from Wrath, how did you get cursed?”
“Like I said, I came for you.” My sister’s gaze turned darker than the shadows that slunk into the chamber. She flung a hex at our grandmother, knocking her unconscious. “I hunted you down, and the Star Witches were ready. They set a trap. You were lying on an altar, blood dripping from your chest.”
She allowed that punch to land squarely in my gut. It was the exact way I’d found her body in the monastery in Sicily. Now I knew her pose had been by design. It hadn’t been a message to me, it had been a warning to Nonna and the witches.
The goddess of death remembered.
“I rushed to you, not noticing the circle of salt and herbs,” she went on. “Uncaring about the spell candles or the arcane symbols glowing all over the walls. Once I crossed the circle, their magic locked me in. It overtook my power, essentially making me mortal for brief moments. Which was all the time they needed to perform their ritual. They chained me down and gave me my own spell-locked heart.”